News Bulletin Number #6
Hi hello good morning/day/evening/what’s up?!
Thank you for opening this week’s newsletter!
Sometimes I think about all the newsletters I’ve sent which never get opened and are just sitting, unread, in a Gmail account somewhere on the internet. It breaks my heart. The laughs that people will never have, the grammatical errors that will go unnoticed, the links that never will clog up browsing tabs!
Ahh. It’s enough to make a man depressed.
No time to be depressed though! Another huge week for me. I’ve decided we need to start getting serious about this disease! Averaging 600 cases again in NSW at the moment (also Warnie has come down with it which means enough is enough).
Anyway, this week’s news headlines:
I GOT THE JAB
Yes! That’s right, I am clean and no longer part of the great unwashed.
Who knows what was in that needle, but I can tell you I felt better immediately. Not, like, in my body or anything, just definitely better than everyone else.
Apparently a doctor in Germany has been injecting people with saline and telling them it was the vaccine. She did almost 6000 people!
She’s a crazy anti vaxxer, and people are furious, but I think she could be onto something and it actually might work?
Sometimes if you think you’re doing something, that’s almost as good as doing the actual thing? Right? Does that make sense? Like the placebo effect?
It reminds me of the time when I was 16 at a house party and this kid I knew decided to refill his other friend’s Lemon Lime UDL (what a drink) with lemonade. His friend had no reason to suspect he wasn’t drinking alcohol so he was getting down and having fun at the party.
As the night progressed, this guy started acting so drunk, slurring his words and even vomited. The look on his face when he was told he was drinking a Schweppes was timeless. He looked like he’d just been told time travel was real and was struggling to comprehend this new 4D reality. We popped Interstellar on and sent him to bed.
Anyway, might point is, if people think they’re getting the vaccine and it works, who cares?! Just tell them it’s Pfizer and start sticking needles in people’s arms. We don’t need to order more vaccines. We could do it at home!
I’ll do it! People that work in the arts have some time on their hands, get me involved!
Everyone* is doing these big social media posts like “just vaccinated” or “got my AZ bitches yaaaaaas!!”
This to me, feels like everyone is doing a personal COVID PR statement. Almost trying to document that they’re on the right side of history?
Like if social media was around before World War 2 and you lived in Nazi Germany, imagine how handy it would have been to do a few quick Insta posts being like “Hi everyone! Btw, quick one, I don’t like the Nazis! Yucky not for me! Big fan of the Jews in fact! I really really stan the Jews! This is documented so if anything happens in the next 6 years please remember this post and my position on it thank you!”
It feels like the exact same thing. Except instead of World War 2 everyone in Australia is just safe proofing themselves for when they get caught at an illegal kick-ons at a house party towards the end of October.
“Umm refer to my post on August the 14th – I think you’ll see I publicly let everyone know I was double vaccinated, and therefor free to do bags with my friends so please disregard the story The Herald Sun is currently running about me and friends having a ‘super spreader event’…”
*I didn’t do a post by the way.
But that’s because I’m cool, not because I didn’t want people to know. Instead I personally messaged everyone in my phone so they knew I was good to go for whenever the underground vaccination parties kick off.
TONY ABBOTT
I was thinking about Tony Abbott the other day (something I wouldn’t recommend). That guy was so funny. Truly. A terrible leader, but man he used to make me laugh.
I wonder what he’s up to? It’s almost a shame he didn’t get to be prime minister during COVID. He would have been so funny. You can just imagine him looking confused and upset trying to understand the data and how the virus was spreading.
Remember when that Channel 7 reporter asked him a question and he couldn’t stop nodding his head? He didn’t say anything at all, just staring off into the distance for an uncomfortably long time. He looked like one of those bobble head dolls you put on the dashboard of your car, but in this situation the bobble head was running the country.
Awww he was awful but kinda cute and fun!
Anyway, I was thinking about Tony Abbott because my suburb is in a 5km lockdown, yet I keep seeing these groups of lycra clad cyclists whizzing past! Where are they going? 5km radius guys! Better be a lap around the block and nothing else!
In 2015, three days after Tony Abbott got knifed by Malcolm Turnbull, I was driving through the lower North Shore of Sydney and saw Tony Abbott, in his full lycra, just cycling alone.
Just by himself, no friends, no peloton, no security detail..
Isn’t that sad? Three days before that he was the most powerful man in the country, 72 hours later he couldn’t even find a friend to go for a bike ride with!
Maybe he’d lost not only the support of the Liberal Party, but of the peloton as well?
Australia is weird like that. We don’t respect our leaders once they’ve left office. It’s awesome. We’re like a sassy girl in a high school romantic comedy film. “Hmm okay, Tony, you’re not PM anymore? Okay fine. Dead. To. Us.”
In America, if you become president, you’re president for life! Your title is ‘Mr President’ till the day you die (I was going to say or ‘Mrs/Miss etc’ but you know..umm. It hasn’t happened yet??). In Australia you’re just some bloke that used to wear suits and speak at press conferences.
It reminds me of the time my friend sat next to John Howard on a plane to Darwin. Isn’t that crazy?! He was prime minister for 12 years, and now he just gets assigned the middle seat in row 8 on Q1 Sydney-Darwin.
I think it’s because Australians not only have the tall-poppy syndrome, but also get a real kick out of being mean. It must come from our colonising roots.
“oh you think you’re better than me because you were prime minister do ya mate? Where’s ya little bike riding buddies then you fucking loser…”
Documentaries about Australia’s cultural identity call it mateship and being a nation of ‘larrikins’, but I just think as a group we like to bully people and tbh it’s kinda fun.
MAN GETS SQUASHED BY COW
Sometimes I read the local paper from where I grew up. I love local papers, they’re so funny. 90% of the stories are community theatre announcements or about the local Rotary Club’s baking drive. The other 10% just go the complete other way and are just like ‘SERIAL KILLER CAUGHT HIDING ON LOCAL PROPERTY’ or ‘LOCAL BAKER TURNS OUT TO BE THE NATION’S BIGGEST PEDOPHILE’.
It’s like whoa chill.
Can we have a bit of middle ground local news? They go from zero to 100 too fast! No one cares about the local musicals or scones. But also, WOW these brutal crimes are a bit too much for small town gossip?? How about a gentle little update on the local economy? Or a councillor that’s taken a bribe? Just a fun story we can all sink our teeth into.
Anyway, I was reading The South Coast Register website (Shoalhaven, NSW) and this story caught my eye:
Worker airlifted to Sydney, in serious condition after ‘squashed’ by cow at Numbaa
I hope everyone involved is okay etc and perhaps this is a bad time to make fun of the wording, but come on – you don’t get ‘squashed’ by a cow? LOL.
I’m not a journalist but I think they’ve used the wrong word! Like you ‘squash’ a tomato, or you get ‘squashed’ in the middle of the backseat on the bus. You don’t get ‘squashed’ by a cow and taken to hospital!
I reckon you get ‘crushed‘ by a cow? Like a cow falls on you and bang – you’re crushed! Not squashed. Like did the cow just sit on him and forget to get back up? Also, what happened to this cow? In my head it was just standing there, next to this poor fella, then bang, the cow just tipped over? Like a tree getting cut down in the forest? Or maybe the cow got a dead leg and just tipped over?
I think the headline should read “man in serious condition after ‘incident’ with a cow..” to me that checks out way more.
Although people might think ‘incident with a cow’ is implying he was doing some weird sex stuff with the cow, so they potentially were trying to avoid that?
OR MAYBE the headline is actually a double bluff?? Going the other way because he really was doing something suss.
The more I think about it the more i think this guy was definitely fucking the cow.
Hmmmmm.
Something to ponder.
POP CULTURE
HACKS
Watch this show. It’s sooooo good. I rolled thru the 10 episodes in the last two days when I was supposed to be writing this newsletter. It’s super funny and a little bit dark, but mostly I like it because it centres around a Las Vegas hack comedian – something I could only dream about being!
Living in a casino, performing the same show every night, making millions a year! It’s the American dream!
The closest thing we have to that in Australia is the cruise ships. They aren’t really the same thing unfortunately. Not only do they have the same amount of glamour as an RSL club, they also haven’t really recovered from the PR disaster that was the Ruby Princess.
Anyway, a must watch! Can’t recommend enough!
oh! And watch these two shows:
The Hundred with Andy Lee
Question Everything
Both have a bunch of my friends on it, but The Hundred has my good buddy Mike Goldstein on it and he’s so funny and crushing a permanent TV slot!
Also.
PLEASE FOLLOW MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL!
That is all.
THANK YOU AND GOODBYE
Thank you for tuning in for another episode of this. Hopefully next week I don’t get distracted by the most minor of day-to-day tasks and will have it in your inbox in a more timely fashion.
Goodbye!